by D K Drake
“It’s one of the many services I provide for my friends,” Reese said. “If you need dinner or a pet or a ride without first getting the king’s permission, I’m your man. The king doesn’t take kindly to those who operate outside of his system, though, so I have to be careful whom I help.”
“We’re not part of the king’s puppets, either,” Ravier said. “We could use some reliable okties to get back home.”
“Okties?” The man chuckled. “I don’t operate that far out of the system. I do have some phenomenal mrickers that can get you from point A to point B in the blink of an eye.”
“They can’t hop over the river. We need to fly.”
“Heading into North Zandador? That does make a difference.” Reese tapped his fingers across his chin. “Like I said, I don’t have any okties, but I do have two boundaroos that will get you home just as fast. I wasn’t planning on selling them, though.”
Smooth, Javan thought. This guy would make a good used car salesman.
“What’s your price?” Ravier asked.
“Ten triangle scales.” Reese paused. “Each.”
“For boundaroos?” Ravier whistled. “Ten for both is way too much.”
“You don’t seem to be in much of a position to bargain.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Ravier said, putting his hand on Reese’s shoulder. “You look like a man who appreciates the finer things in life. What if I told you I had a device you could wear on your wrist that tells you exactly what time of day it is at any moment of the day?”
Javan cocked his head at Ravier’s description of a watch, especially since Ravier wasn’t wearing a watch of his own.
Reese’s eyes widened. “I’d say you could have as many boundaroos as you want.”
“Good,” Ravier said. “Javan, give him your time device.”
“Excuse me? I’m not giving up my watch. I earned this two years ago for helping a guy tame his wild horse. It’s engraved and everything.”
“You call it a watch?” Reese seized Javan’s left wrist and inspected the gold watch. “Fascinating. I’ll take it.”
“Give it to him,” Ravier ordered.
“Fine.” Javan glared at Ravier with his one open eye as he unclasped the band and handed the prized watch to a giddy Reese.
“The boundaroos are in the back right corner,” Reese said, strapping the watch on his wrist and dismissing his guests.
Javan hated the idea of leaving his watch with the midget in exchange for some weird-named creature. That watch belonged on his wrist, not the animal salesman’s. Only he didn’t have a chance to protest. Ravier grabbed his arm and dragged him to the back of the building. At least he no longer had to worry about hiding his eye.
The cages and animals got bigger and bigger the farther back they walked. By the time they made it to the back right corner, the animals were as tall as or taller than them.
“I hate boundaroos,” Ravier said, stopping in front of two red-furred creatures jumping and spinning and turning and twisting in their cages while hooting and snorting at the top of their lungs. “They’re wild, stupid, irritating, loud and obnoxious, not to mention uncomfortable to ride. But they are fast and can swim.”
“You sure we can ride these things? They look a little out of control.”
“I told you they’re wild. They’re easy to control, though, once you grab hold of their ears.”
“And how are you supposed to do that?” The animals were so busy spinning that Javan couldn’t even tell where their ears were.
“Watch.” Ravier clanged both cages and let out a shrieking whistle. The animals stopped, stood on their hind legs and stared at Ravier. Their eyes were level with Ravier, and they looked like giant Tasmanian devils with the long ears of a rabbit and the pouch and tail of a kangaroo.
Ravier opened the door of the first cage, grabbed the tip of the animal’s ear and led it out to Javan. “Hold this.”
Javan took charge of the furry ear while Ravier extracted the other from its cage in the same way. “What now?” Javan asked.
“Keep hold of her ears and step inside her pouch.”
“Huh?” They were going to ride under the animal? That didn’t seem like a good plan.
“Just do what I do.”
Ravier positioned himself under his boundaroo’s head and snagged the other ear so that he was holding one ear in each hand beside his face. Then he stepped inside the pouch which covered him almost to his waist. “Use the ears like reigns to tell the boundaroo where you want to go.”
“Okay.” Javan mimicked Ravier. He stood under his boundaroo, clutched the other ear and stepped inside the gooey pouch. He cringed as slobber dripped on his face. “Ugh.”
“Brace yourself,” Ravier said. “It’s going to be a long ride home.” Ravier tugged his boundaroo’s ears forward. The animal charged down the aisle, through the front door and leaped off the porch.
Javan closed his eyes and mumbled, “I do not want to do this. I do not want to do this. I do not want to do this.” He inched his right eye open, held his breath and jerked his hands forward.
The boundaroo screeched, spun in a circle and bounded down the aisle after Ravier. Without pausing, the animal sailed off the porch, spinning and slobbering and jostling Javan around the whole way down.
They landed with a thump, found the waiting Ravier and bounded through the darkening swamp at a pace that would make a galloping Storm look like he was standing still.
Chapter 12
A Smashing Return
Esmeralda walked yet another lap around the front yard. Midnight was approaching, and the boys had yet to return. They were more than twelve hours overdue. Something had gone dreadfully wrong.
Had they been killed by the dragon? Captured by the king? Beaten by vagabonds?
She never should have let Hannah talk her out of going after them. Now she would have to wait until morning to take off on a rescue mission. She just hoped she would be able to find them without getting herself recaptured.
“What are you doing out here?”
Hannah’s call from the porch sent annoyed shivers down Esmeralda’s spine and caused her to halt in her tracks. “Just waiting,” Esmeralda said.
“Come inside where you can sit down and be quiet. I can’t sleep with you tromping all over my grass.”
Esmeralda grit her teeth and crossed her arms. She wasn’t about to cater to her mother-in-law’s demands. “Aren’t you just a little bit worried that Ravier isn’t back with Javan yet?”
“Ravier knows how to take care of himself. He’ll be back when he gets back.”
A wood-splitting crash and ear-piercing shouts from the okty barn behind the house superseded Esmeralda’s response. The two women looked at each other, then ran to investigate the commotion.
Esmeralda wasn’t prepared for what she saw. Should she take charge, run away or laugh at the craziness? Unsure what action to take, she stood dumbfounded beside Hannah in the shattered doorway.
Okties who should have been quietly resting on their perches were swishing around and banging into each other while trying to avoid the red boundaroos bouncing about and badgering the okties.
Ravier and Javan stood in the middle of the chaos yelling at each other. Both were covered in what appeared to be a combination of water, slobber and dirt. Their pants, sticky with boundaroo goo, were suctioned to their legs. Their shirts were ripped. Their hair was disheveled.
And they looked ready to kill each other.
“I told you to make your boundaroo stop, not crash into my barn door,” Ravier was saying. “Now it’s going to take me hours to calm these okties down and round up the escapees.”
“I told you that I tried to make it stop,” Javan said, “but that stinky animal wasn’t in a cooperative mood. Guess it wasn’t happy after I made it run through a swamp, swim through a river filled with biting fish, crawl through pitch-black caves, climb up and down steep hills, weave through a thick forest and carry a per
son in its belly!”
“None of that would have been necessary if you would have just kept your mouth shut when we were watching the dragon!”
“How was I supposed to know the dragon could teleport, spit acid and devour okties? You’re supposed to be the teacher,” Javan said, pointing his finger and poking Ravier in the chest, “and you did a terrible job of teaching me!”
“Don’t touch me again.”
“Oh? You mean don’t do this?” Javan pressed both of his hands onto Ravier’s chest and pushed.
Ravier didn’t budge. He did, however, push back, sending Javan to the ground with a flick of his wrist. “You don’t want to fight me,” he said.
“I think I do.” Javan jumped to his feet and rushed shoulder first into Ravier. It was another futile attempt to knock Ravier off balance, but Javan only succeeded in angering Ravier.
Esmeralda rolled her eyes. Her son had more spunk than smarts. If she didn’t step in, he was likely to get himself hurt. She stuck her pinky fingers at the edges of her mouth and whistled for ten seconds straight.
The boundaroos stopped bounding.
The okties stopped flying.
The boys stopped fighting.
“Now that I have your attention,” she said, taking each boundaroo by the ear, “Javan, I want you to go inside, shower and go to bed. Ravier, I want you to feed these things, then set them free in the woods. Hannah, you’re going to account for all the okties and find any that flew away. In the meantime, I’ll rig a door so no more can escape.”
When no one moved, Esmeralda handed off the boundaroos to Ravier and shouted, “Go!”
Ravier grunted and took control of the boundaroos. He led them to the corner feeding trough while Hannah wandered off, mumbling something about recovering the escaped okties because she wanted to, not because Esmeralda told her to.
The only one who didn’t move was Javan. “Well,” she said, “go shower.”
“I want to watch you fix the door. I’ve never seen anyone use magic before.”
“Magic?” Esmeralda laughed. “There’s nothing magical about pounding nails into wood. What makes you think I am going to use magic?”
“Gee, I don’t know,” Javan said. “I just figured that a place with dragons and portals and invisible shields had magic to go along with it. Any earthling who has read about fantasy worlds like this would logically conclude that magic is involved. I’ve kinda been wondering what my magical powers are and how to use them.”
“First of all, this isn’t a fantasy world. It’s a real place in a real dimension that is just different than yours. Second, what you see as magical is nothing more than scientific scalology in action. Scalologists have worked for thousands of years to figure out how to use the scales the dragons shed every ten years to give us energy, medicine, portals and even invisible shields.
“And third, you don’t have any magical powers. You do have a unique talent that allows you to communicate telepathically with dragons, and once you begin collecting dragons, you’ll be able to tap into and use the speed, strength, invisibility and teleportation abilities of your dragons.
“But you, my son—just like every other person in this dimension—have no magical powers. If you did, you wouldn’t need to go through with the very human, very mundane activity of taking a shower. Please go do that now. You’re filthy, and you stink.”
“Don’t you want to know why I’m filthy?”
“I look forward to hearing the story tomorrow when you’re clean, and I’m rested.” Esmeralda wanted to hear his story and wrap him in her arms and tell him how glad she was that he was back and safe. But after only two days, she didn’t think they had reached the touchy-feely phase of their mother/son relationship.
Besides, the kid really needed a shower. She pointed to the door. “Go.”
“Gladly,” Javan said. “I can’t wait to go back to my real home tomorrow.”
He brushed past her, and she suddenly regretted not giving him that hug when she had the chance.
◊◊◊
“Whoever those scalologists are,” Javan said, shivering and burying himself under the covers on his bed, “they need to figure out how to get hot water in their showers.”
At least the contraptions they called showers encouraged quick cleaning and minimal water waste. But it sure was a miserable experience stepping into that steel closet punctured with holes on three walls, the ceiling and floor.
Had he known what was coming when he stepped on the pedal on the floor, he would have braced himself for the onslaught of frigid water rushing at him from the hundreds of holes around him. Instead, he was caught off guard, jumped, slipped and bruised his butt.
Showers here were cold, painful experiences. On the plus side, he did like the soap and shampoo; he smelled like he just stepped out of a rain forest.
The fatigue didn’t take long to overpower the cold, and Javan soon drifted off to sleep.
He had no idea how long he had been sleeping when a noise from the porch below startled him. He tried to check the time, but considering his earlier “gift” to Reese, his watch was no longer on his wrist, and the room didn’t have a clock.
Javan stayed in bed with his eyes closed trying to force himself back to sleep. He could tell, however, that someone was pacing on the wooden planks, and he could hear the sound of muffled voices. Curious, he got up, opened his window and listened.
“Fail, fail, fail,” Ravier was saying. “All that kid did today is fail.”
“Oh, it couldn’t have been that bad.” Esmeralda’s voice. Cool. His mother was defending him.
“Really? He had no respect for the dragon, got our okties eaten, made eye contact with the clerk in Torix, lost our seeds and nearly himself in swallowing sand, forced us to travel by boundaroo and whined and moaned and complained like a childish brat all day.”
“Ravier, give him a break. He’s young, he’s in a strange new place, and he hasn’t learned how to handle himself in Zandador. That’s your job: to teach him.”
“I pass. He’s not the one. He can’t be the one. If he is, we have no hope.” Ravier’s voice lowered, and Javan had to strain to hear. “Besides, we’re asking the impossible of him. The only dragons remaining in Zandador are hundreds of years old. Collecting a yearling is tough enough; collecting four dragons—all more than 500 years old—can’t be done.”
“It can if he’s trained properly.”
“The first dragon he tries to ride is going to eat him alive no matter how well he’s trained.”
Javan gulped. That did not sound pleasant.
“You’re wrong, and there’s something you need to get through your head right now.” Esmeralda spoke with an intensity Javan hadn’t heard in her voice before. “Your son isn’t here. As much as you wanted him to be, he’s not the one. Javan is. And he needs your help.”
“He’s not going to get it. I’m done with him. Take him back where he came from tomorrow. I’ll meet with the men of the village; we’ll figure out another way to overthrow the Dark King.”
“There is no other way.”
“There has to be. Because that kid is not man enough to be a Collector or a King.”
Javan heard the front door open and slam shut, but it was the harsh words of his grandfather that caused Javan’s knees to buckle and his body to slump down to the floor.
He wanted to get angry.
But he couldn’t.
Not when he knew his grandfather was right.
Chapter 13
Captured
The sun was high in the afternoon sky by the time Javan rolled his stiff, sore, beat-up body out of bed. He had traversed entirely too many miles on foot yesterday, and now he was feeling the consequences of that abuse. He just hoped he would be recovered enough by tomorrow to reclaim his insignificant place on his football team.
He was ready to slip back into his comfortable world where no one expected anything of him or from him. Here, he was nothing but a disappointment. He
couldn’t be who these people wanted him to be. He wasn’t king material.
He didn’t even know how to be a son or grandson. He was better off being a lonely orphan back on that ranch in Montana.
Javan cringed in pain with every tiny move he made as he dressed in a clean t-shirt and shorts from his stash of colorful earth clothes, covered his eyes with his contacts and wandered downstairs, his packed backpack slung over his shoulder. If all went well, perhaps he could be back at the ranch in time to soak his overused muscles in a warm bath before dinner tonight.
Then again, he might not be hungry later.
Hannah was waiting for him in the kitchen and had the long table covered with all sorts of delicious smelling food. “You’re up,” she said, smothering him with a hug. “I know you didn’t eat much yesterday, poor thing, so I made everything I had.” She led him to the table, sat him down and started piling food on his plate. “Eat!”
“Thanks.” He bowed his head, thanked God for his food, then wondered if God even heard prayers from people in this dimension.
Did they worship God here? Javan didn’t recall seeing any churches. It didn’t matter. He was going to keep praying to the one God he knew regardless of his dimensional location.
He took a bite of something that resembled roast beef. The savory, tender meat practically melted in his mouth. He took another bite. And another.
For the next twenty minutes, he gorged himself on the various meats, vegetables, breads, potatoes and sweets Hannah provided. When his appetite was finally satisfied, he had the sense to realize no one else was around. “Where’s Esmeralda?” He didn’t really care where Ravier was.
“I think she went for a walk earlier.” She sat on the bench beside him. “You don’t have to go back, you know. This is your home. We’re your family. We want you here with us whether you collect dragons or not.”